WDHOF Member Roster Detail

Carole Baldwin Ph.D., 2003

Dr. Carole Baldwin is a well-respected authority on marine biology, especially tropical-marine fishes. Her face will be familiar to any of you who have seen the Smithsonian 3-D IMAX film, Galapagos, for which she was a scientific advisor and on-air talent. She grew up in coastal South Carolina and studied at James Madison University, the College of Charleston and the College of William and Mary. She has published over 70 scientific articles, and her work includes the discovery of dozens of new fish species from Belize, Curacao, Tobago, Saba Bank, Australia, Cook Islands, El Salvador and Galápagos. Her current research is focused on diversity and evolution of Caribbean reef fishes through a combination of genetic and traditional morphological investigation. This work has recently involved submersible diving to 1,000 ft. off Curacao in the southern Caribbean as part of DROP (Deep Reef Observation Project), a Smithsonian marine research initiative that Baldwin established in 2011. In 2003 Carole was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, in 2006 she received the Ronald E. Carrier Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from James Madison University, and in 2014 she was inducted as an alumni member into the James Madison University chapter of Phi Beta Kapa. She is currently in the Director’s Circle of the National Aquarium, a member of the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, a Council Member for the Biological Society of Washington, and a sectional editor for the scientific journal Zookeys. She has devoted much time to sharing her experiences as a marine biologist with students and the general public and is a positive role model for females considering careers in science. Dr. Baldwin is senior author of One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish -- The Smithsonian Sustainable Seafood Cookbook (Smithsonian Books 2003 ), a marine conservation project featuring educational information and recipes from professional chefs for U.S. seafood species fished or farmed in an environmentally sound manner. More recently, Dr. Baldwin served as a curator of the Smithsonian’s popular Sant Ocean Hall. She is based at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, where she has worked as a Research Zoologist (Curator of Fishes) since 2001.